Photography by Jorge M. Gonzalez

Welcome to Oaklandphotojournal.com. Seeking a wider audience, we have launched a site whose focus is Oakland’s dynamic splendor. Capturing Oakland’s impressive beauty is as challenging freezing it’s constant change in a single frame. Although Oakland finds itself in a watershed moment in its development, the massive geographic shifts evident as we enter the second half of 2016 are part of the Bay Area’s long standing history of progressive politics that have developed along side it’s art. My contribution to that history intends to make use visual language that pays homage to the literary style of one of my favorite writers, Oscar Zeta Acosta. My photographic style draws large inspiration from the journalistic style Acosta and Hunter S. Thompson made prominent in the late 60s- early 70s. I call my photographic approach “gonzo” because it seeks unconventional subjects, the hyperbole of form, and establish as well as capture subjective style that conveys a set of values that represents the space they are shot in, namely, Oakland.

The site features image, text, and the often elusive ora of the universe. The Photojournal posts tease out the dynamic relation between images and words, while the Zine page explores the edge of observation and proposition in street photography. Finally, the gallery pages will highlight selections from my portfolio. These projects in series, both past and and ongoing, are photographic phenomenological exercises. My photo series seek to excavate meaning of social phenomena, each frame performs a kind phenomenological bracketing, and invites us to analyze experience in space, in struggle, in rage, in love, etc…

***All featured written and photographic work is owned by the author and cannot be copied or distributed without his explicit written consent.